Category Archives: Uncategorized

This is a ridiculously good post on 20th versus 21st century problems and the rise of the importance of empirical science. I particularly like the discussion of what it means to be a "solved" problem and how that has changed. … Continue reading →

Here's a little thought experiment for your weekend pleasure. Consider the following: Joe Scientist decides to conduct a study (call it Study A) to test the hypothesis that a parameter D > 0 vs. the null hypothesis that D = 0. He … Continue reading →

A tutorial on deep-learning, I really enjoyed reading it, but I'm still trying to figure out how this is different than non-linear logistic regression to estimate features then supervised prediction using those features? Or maybe I'm just naive.... Rafa on … Continue reading →

Recently there have been some high profile flameouts in scientific research. A couple examples include the Duke saga, the replication issues in social sciences, p-value hacking, fabricated data, not enough open-access publication, and on and on. Some of these results … Continue reading →

Nature has jumped on to the reproducibility bandwagon and has announced a new approach to improving reproducibility of submitted papers. The new effort is focused primarily and methodology, including statistics, and in making sure that it is clear what an … Continue reading →

One element about the entire discussion about reproducible research that I haven't seen talked about very much is the potential for the lack of reciprocity. I think even if scientists were not concerned about the possibility of getting scooped by … Continue reading →

What it feels like to be bad at math. My personal experience like this culminated in some difficulties with Green's functions back in my early days at USU. I think almost everybody who does enough math eventually runs into a … Continue reading →